Renner, South Dakota
USA
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The COE Car Hauler project almost died and was on life support when I received my cab from North Carolina.
As has become a normal practice it was completely misrepresented by the seller and is rusted beyond use.
Very heavy rust pitting (not the surface rust described), body seams on the cowl and roof rusted out,
and the drip rails completely rusted off made it unusable. I will save the grill and headlights and that's about it.
A good sandblasting would have made most of it disappear, and what was left would have had to
had a complete skim coat of mud. That's not the way I do things so I thought I would abandon the whole project.
Not to be easily discouraged (too stupid??), I kept looking and did find another COE from
Montana that appears to be in much better condition and nearly rust free.
It's much more money but I guess the old adage "you get what you pay for" is still true.
I am working out the details to look at it first before I fork over the cash and pick it up.
I'm hoping for better luck this time. Here are some pics of it. It is sitting on a 1 ton Dodge
chassis that will be dumped in favor of the 1 ton Chevy chassis.
I also will be using one of the oval grilles I have and selling the '47 grille.
(A) In my building in Crooks, I have an overhead hoist that is strong enough to lift only the COE cab
(thats all I'll trust it to do) off the Dodge stub thats sitting on the Chevy chassis,
but it is too high sitting on the trailer so I have to push or unload the Chevy chassis into
the building without a winch (it has a bad tire and rolls hard) to do that.
(B) Or go to my friends body shop and use his fork lift to unload the Coe cab/Dodge stub.
Then unload the Chevy chassis by backing up to a pole at my Crooks building and pulling it off.
Go back and pick up the COE cab/ Dodge stub and back it under the hoist, cut the mounts and hoist the COE cab off.
This all depends on if the fork lift can handle it and if the forks are long enough.